Error: unable to swith the encoding

January 16 2008

  • 11 replies.
  • This question is not yet resolved.
  • This question was started by Ali Qureshi.
  • Last post by Sjoerd.
Ali Qureshi
member
16 January, 16:07
Please help.
I get the following error when trying to open an unlocked xml file: Xopus could not start because: An error occured while parsing XML file 'http://"filename".
Reason: Unable to switch the encoding.

At: 1, 38

Has this anything to do with the version of the XML parser? Its not working with MSXML 4.0 and with MSXML 6.0. We use IE 6SP2. Any body any idea?
Ali Qureshi
member
16 January, 16:14
Xopus version 2 that is.
Sjoerd
Xopus Team
17 January, 11:01
Usually you get this error when the xml processing instruction (<?xml ...?>) says the xml file is UTF-16, but it is UTF-8, or the other way around. A simple solution would be to just remove the xml processing instruction to let MSXML figure out the encoding.
Ali Qureshi
member
17 January, 11:40
Okay Sjoerd, thanks very much for your quick reply.

I have no in depth knowledge of xml or xopus, but could you perhaps explain how to accomplish to remove the xml processing instruction. I would very much appreciate it.
Sjoerd
Xopus Team
17 January, 12:47
That would usually be done on the server which provides the xml file. How to do that depends on the server setup.
Ali Qureshi
member
17 January, 14:29
The files are on a Win2k3SP2 64bit edition server. The XML files are supplied by an external party, and one department uses Xopus to check the file for errors, via IE6 and MSXML4.0 parser. The first line of the file starts with <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> as you stated. Is there any other specific info you need. Is it possible to configure this somewhere centrally?
Sjoerd
Xopus Team
17 January, 14:33
Could you try to remove that first line with notepad, to see if that file then loads in Xopus 2?
Ali Qureshi
member
17 January, 14:57
Ha Sjoerd, I tried this in the mean time and indeed by removing the first line it works fine. So that is good.
But it used to work just fine like this in the past, till august 2007. with older files with this line <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> in it. Any idea what the difference could be? Nothing has changed in the meanwhile, except some Microsoft Updates.
Sjoerd
Xopus Team
17 January, 15:01
Yes, this is certainly related to MSXML automatic updates. More customers have this issue since about halfway 2007.
Ali Qureshi
member
18 January, 14:57
I've tried to figure out which update this could have been but haven't been able to find out exactly yet. We use Windows XP SP2. Will keep looking further and post it when I find it.
Ali Qureshi
member
21 January, 09:54
Not been able to find out which MS update has caused this behaviour. Anyone any idea? Or perhaps a fix?
Sjoerd
Xopus Team
21 January, 12:39
I doubt it, but maybe it was a server side update, which caused the server to send the files in a different encoding?


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